Shared parenting in Sweden (Where it’s a norm)

Malin Bergström – Sweden. Prof. Bergström is with the renowned Karolinska Institute, and possesses a unique research database due to the fact that shared parenting is the norm in Sweden. She is a clinical child psychologist with 20 years experience of clinical experience. Malin has written several books about child development, attachment theory and parenting. Her research focuses on children’s health and welfare in shared parenting arrangements. After having conducted mainly epidemiological studies on schoolaged children and adolescents, she is now studying preschool children and infants in shared parenting settings, and conducting longitudinal studies on children in different family types. Health and wellbeing in Swedish 3-18 year olds in equal shared parenting arrangements. Equal shared parenting arrangements are common in the Nordic countries and the practice is further increasing. Our latest data collections imply that this is now the norm among separating parents. Since 2011 we have studied health and wellbeing in children in shared and single parenting arrangements and are now focusing on preschoolers. In our studies, children in shared parenting have been shown to have better health and wellbeing than those in single care arrangements. In this presentation, I will discuss these findings in relation to the Swedish norms on parent gender equity and whether our results can be generalized to children in other countries. In particular, our new findings on health and wellbeing among 3- 5-year-olds will be elaborated.